Standing before him, with human skin as black as ink, the wolf’s head still laughs at him. This half wolf, half man, it reaches out to Basuin with long claws, arms tattooed with swirling red lines that glow, and if he wasn’t unable to move, he would recoil in pure fear. But the wolf-man’s sharp talon hooks around his leather string, bringing the jade godstone up to its red eyes to inspect.
Basuin almost falls to his knees and begs—Please, no. Take anything but that. It’s all he has left of her.
But the wolf-man only huffs another laugh, dropping it back to Basuin’s chest.
“You are lucky somebody loves you,” the wolf-man says, if the sound oozing from between its canines could be called words. “So blessed to be Basuin of Ankor. Your choice was just.”
And before Basuin of Ankor can even speak, the wolf-man’s clawed hand collides with his chest, breaking his ribcage, shattering his tree-bone into splinters, puncturing his lungs and collapsing them inside of him. Something is forced out of him—his own spirit, his own soul—and something else so dreadfully cold and burning hot all at once replaces it like a light both black and white.
He’s being burned alive from the inside out, the wound eating itself at the edges. And as the wound becomes ever bigger, the wolf-man climbs inside his ribcage, hollowing out his chest and taking up home where his heart used to be.
He is full. Of what, he isn’t sure, but it aches like death and stinks like decay.
On the cusp of the Blacksalt Sea, Basuin floats once again.
I am your god, the voice of the wolf-man echoes inside of him. You are my possession.
Chapter 6
“Don’t! Don’t touch him,” a young voice snarls. Just a boy, from the sound of it, as Basuin’s eyes struggle to open.
“I’m not,” another voice whispers—younger. “I think he’s hurt.”
The forest still looks unfamiliar when he blinks away the blur in his vision. The sky is blocked out by a canopy of leaves swaying overhead, the tall oaks’ branches intertwining as if holding hands. They shelter him from the sun rising high in the sky. Basuin can’t tell if it’s risen or soon to set.
“It doesn’t matter!” Angry and hissing. “He’s one of them.”
That stings worse than the smoke in his eyes. Basuin sits up—tries to, at least—with a groan of pain and a curse slipped from between his lips. His fingers clutch at his chest where the ache burns something fierce. Where his heart used to be. It feels empty now, and yet overflowing. Heavy, but with nothing.
Basuin rubs his eyes, gentle on his left where the scar is still fragile, aches radiating all throughout his body. He hunches over his lap, body curled inwardly, an arm braced against his stomach. There is soot, black as the earth, marring his palm, ash smeared on his skin. The fire was real, wasn’t it?
His eyes search over his forearms. There are no blisters or burns, no scratches from claws, no bruises or blood. Just stretches of dark bronze skin fitted over twitching muscles marked by sunspots and dark moles from standing beneath the Xalkhan sun. Basuin’s eyes trace over the white scars drawn on his body, flexing his fingers to encourage the blood back. When the needling fades and he regains feeling in his limbs, someone gasps.
Two young boys stand a few feet away from him—one with wheat-brown hair, holding tight to the elbow of another with gold-white hair messy and hanging in front of his eyes. Children.
“Shit!” the brown-haired one curses, yanking the other toward him. “Get back! Get away from us!”
The blond boy stares Basuin down, eyes big and childlike and filled with sincerity. “Hami,” he cuts at the other boy, pulling his arm free. “He won’t hurt us.”
Hami’s face shatters into betrayal, mouth trembling until he sets it in a line of anger. Then, he glares straight through the forest at Basuin, eyes the same dark shade as the leaves shaken from the trees above them.
“Who are you?” Basuin asks. Children, out in the forest. On an island, abandoned, and they’re alone. No, this cannot be. With a grunt of pain, he pushes himself off the forest floor, struggling for air as he clutches his chest.
“Don’t,” Hami cries, but the other boy is faster. He advances quicker than Basuin can take a step back, until his sandal catches on a root running through the ground and he pitches forward. Reflexively, Basuin catches him by the shoulder.
“Yaelic!” the boy shouts, breathing hard. “My name is Yaelic and I—I’m going to serve you!” He pulls away from Basuin’s grasp. Yaelic stands tall, forcing his shoulders back and his chin up, but still barely reaches Basuin’s torso.
Basuin’s jaw hangs. “What?”
“You saved us,” the child Yaelic says. “My brother and I, you saved us from the fire.” He glances over his shoulder at Hami, who stares on in fear.
“No,” Hami seethes, but it’s iced in dread.
Basuin’s eyes flick between the brothers, slow realization wriggling like worms in his head. The fire, the wolf pups. These aren’t children. They’re spirits.
Confusion, and a cold concoction of something else, sends a bitter wave rolling through his stomach. He doesn’t know where he is anymore. Who—or what—he is. But it hurts. His hand sneaks its way to his collar, squeezing his mother’s stone in his palm.
“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” he answers the boy and hopes it’s true. “Tell me which way to the bastion and I’ll leave you alone.”
